As part of its strategy to grow as a services, hardware and software company, Microsoft has put a lot of focus on its effort to expand its retail store presence.

At first this effort was focused only on the United States, but recently has begun to expand into Canada as well. Once the ball is rolling, why stop there though?

It seems that Microsoft is now in talks to push its Microsoft Store retail efforts into the United Kingdom as well.

While Microsoft has yet to officially announce plans, unnamed sources first reporting to the Financial Times state that the Redmond giant is now in talks with many retail landlords in the UK about opening stores sometime in 2013.

Unfortunately, we have no clue which towns and cities are being targeted for this expansion effort.

Odds are, at the very least you will likely find a Microsoft Store in London sometime in 2013, keep in mind that’s just speculation though.

We also have no clue if this is just one or two stores for the entire nation, or if it is a more concentrated number. To be honest, it sounds like Microsoft isn’t sure either. The report claims the amount of actual stores targeted at the UK will depend on an end-of-year review of Microsoft Store current performance in the US and Canada.

Depending on this data, Microsoft will make the decision on how many stores it wants to invest in.

While Microsoft Store permanent locations have so far been very large retail buildings, Microsoft might decide that there is power in numbers when it comes to the UK.

Instead of focusing on a few select massive locations, they might instead go with a strategy of creating numerous smaller stores to at least give consumers a “taste” of things like the Surface and upcoming Windows Phone 8 devices.

What do you think of Microsoft’s latest expansion effort, wise move or not?